


Delete

by orphan_account



Category: One Piece
Genre: Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Jealousy, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Self-Hatred, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:54:04
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24450907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The remnants of an online friendship. Law feels sad and then he jerks off.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Roronoa Zoro, Monkey D. Luffy/Trafalgar D. Water Law
Comments: 1
Kudos: 61





	Delete

Law still thought about him sometimes, as much as he tried not to. He wished for erasure, _wished_ to not think of the sunny smile in the photo he’d long since deleted from his phone. How long had it been since he’d done that? Three months? No, it had to be more like four.

He ground his face into the pillow, sideburns scraping the fabric near his ears. The sound it made was crackly, like rubbing the soft half of a strip of Velcro with the pad of your thumb. It did nothing to help pull Law from his thoughts. He didn’t want to know the time, whatever count past midnight it was. Knowing would change nothing. Time did nothing for him. It had done nothing.

How long had it been, though? Three years since the first time they’d chatted. All jokes and very late nights, for Law at least. They’d been on other sides of the world -- still were -- and Law’s nights had often worn on into Luffy’s afternoons. Law hadn’t minded. His head and heart were pumped full of excitement, filled to the brim. He would have done anything for Luffy, then.

Maybe he still would.

Law lifted his head and slammed it against his pillow with an unsatisfying _whump._ If he shifted, then he could hit his head against the bedframe, but he didn’t want to go back to that. He’d come so far since then… He remembered a message from Luffy, saying he wished he could put Law in a room with no hard edges.

_“You mean a padded cell?”_

“Fuck,” Law muttered, and rolled over violently. The clock ticked on the wall.

It’d been two years since he’d realized that he’d been saying Luffy’s name all wrong. With a _luh_ instead of a _loo._ Every time Law had mentioned his online friend to Bepo or Penguin, it had been wrong. Every utterance had been _wrong._ Luffy had laughed at him, reassuring messages popping up one after another beneath Law’s hovering thumbs.

_“It’s fine!”_

It wasn’t fine. Why hadn’t Luffy understood? So fucking easygoing. It made Law sick, angry. What made Law even sicker was that he couldn’t figure out why it upset him so much.

When Law had mailed Luffy that package, almost a year and a half ago, he had wondered again why he cared so much. The box had been packed with things from all around Law, from his home that Luffy was so far from. He wanted to make himself part of Luffy’s home. But Luffy seemed far more interested in his other friend, Zoro. Zoro, also far away, but somehow closer.

_“He means so much to me.”_

Law gritted his teeth and clenched his fist in the bedclothes. _I don’t want to think about this. I don’t want to think about this,_ he chanted in his head, but his thoughts didn’t give a damn what he wanted. _Remember that hatred, and that hurt, Law._

“No,” he muttered, shaking his head.

Late one night, after crying in Bepo’s arms for an hour trying to understand something that couldn’t be understood, Law had let his friend leave and messaged Luffy. He knew he shouldn’t wake him up like this, make him start his day with this, but there was a numbness in Law, and it was something he couldn’t make go away. A sick part of him wanted Luffy to feel it too.

With the stroke of Law’s finger hitting _send,_ something was born, something that poisoned all the messages he sent to and received from Luffy, after that. When Law admitted to Luffy that night that he thought he loved him, Luffy let him down easy. Luffy couldn’t love anyone like that. Law knew, and he still told him.

Why did he tell him?

“Nnngh,” Law groaned, reaching hands up to cover his ears. _Don’t pull your hair, don’t pull your hair._ He rolled onto his back, scrunching his eyes shut.

That final year, Luffy scared Law all the time. Things kept happening to him, and there was nothing Law could do. Across the ocean, all he could do was sit and listen as Luffy recovered from blow after blow. He was so cavalier about it all, and his attitude exhausted Law to a point of resentment. Their conversations came and went, and Law couldn’t help but wonder what Luffy was saying to Zoro.

Maybe he was better at listening than you were.

“Shut up,” Law growled to himself. He sat up and hunched over forward, as if in pain. “Shut the fuck up.”

Over those months of talking to Luffy, the resentment in Law’s belly turned to a paralyzing kind of anxiety. Even the mere thought of opening his phone and looking at his chat with Luffy had made Law’s head spin sickeningly. Each time it happened, he tried to shrug it off, but it always came back. That strange sickness.

For a month, Law pretended that he couldn’t see Luffy’s messages asking if he was okay. Hoping that he was okay. Law opened the chat, stared at each new concerned message, and then closed the DM. He didn’t know how to tell Luffy that he never wanted to speak to him again.

How do you tell someone that?

Law got drunk one night and blocked Luffy on every messenger app and social media platform. He was with other friends, then, physical friends, friends he could touch and hear and see. Things he could never do with Luffy. He let one of those friends take him to bed that night, let them fuck the thoughts from his head. It helped, and Law felt that maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to forget.

And here he was, hunched over on his bed in the dark. Staring into the back of his eyelids, trying to erase the image of the one photo he had had of Luffy. He had deleted it four months ago, so why could he still see it? He pressed delete in his mind over and over again, pleading with it to go away.

He didn’t want to see that face. The face of the person he’d loved, the one he’d betrayed by leaving without a trace. The face he had never seen in person, and never would.

He laid back down and put his hand down his pants.

“Don’t think about me,” Law begged quietly as he pumped his cock with slow strokes, the image of Luffy floating above him. Smiling down at him. “Don’t waste your time thinking of me--”

He gasped, rubbing a thumb against the head of his cock. Did he want that hand to be Luffy’s? Maybe once. Now, nothing made sense anymore.

“Please… don’t ever forgive me.”

When Law came, he came crying, whimpering Luffy’s name. The image of his old friend dissolved, and Law sobbed with relief as he felt himself drifting away, numb and dirtied.


End file.
